Githyanki Attack
After a fairly quiet year many of the guild members were sitting around the Wahda guild hall when Dolan and his bodyguard, a moon elf of few words named Zenmaer came to visit. Dolan briefly stopped by to make sure Wahda guild had received his notice that a tribe of Tabaxi called the Shiorraidh had picked up camp and moved ten miles north of Alfenheim. He warned them that the Shiorraidh had been responsible for several raids on NewTown and the murder of two members of his own guild, the New Town Defenders. Dolan said these Panther Tabaxi were under a new leader though now as their old leader had been overthrown in a coup, and there haven’t been any conflict between NewTown and the Panther Tabaxi since. After this Dolan left to meet with some investors and the guild discussed what to do. Helena grabbed Artemis, Nyanta, Blazej and Cassandra to go investigate the Tabaxi while Tarthurac took on the guild’s morning mission. Upon reaching the Panther Tabaxi camp, Helena disguised herself as a tabaxi and the group entered the camp. Inside the camp they found that all the Panther tabaxi were watching them nervously from their tents. Several scouts were watching them from outside the camp and there was a tense feeling of distrust and unease in the camp. Helena entered the main tent to speak with their leader, Ussamej, disguised as a Tabaxi, but the chief had one of his shaman dispel her disguise. He told her and the rest of the guild that his people were here looking for a new home. After their troubles with NewTown they they were looking to move off to their ancestral home on an island off the coast. Wahda guild didn’t believe him, but he didn't seem like he was a current threat so Helena left his tent. However, being Helena, she abruptly re-entered the tent to ask one more question and saw one of their scouts in a cloak of the manta ray duck out the back to avoid being spotted. The party debated whether or not to do anything about the Panthers, but they decided to head back to town. Once they got back to town they returned to the guild hall where Tarthurac told them about his mission. He said two cloaks of the manta ray were stolen from a merchant and he was looking for the culprit. The group instantly put two and two together and got out one of Temtum’s maps to look at notable marks near the Panther Tabaxi camp. If they needed cloaks that allowed them to breathe underwater they were likely searching the coastline for something. After some debate, they decided an old sunken ship wreck was the most likely place they would find the Panther scouts. Helena went to the Burning Ale tavern to enlist the help of Gigi’s ship to get them to the sunken wreck since Blanka’s ship had already been winterized. The next morning the same group set out on Gigi’s ship and after a short delay when they hit some reefs off the coast they reached the general vicinity of the sunken ship when Cassandra noticed movement in the water beneath them. Helena leapt overboard to see two panther tabaxi with the stolen cloaks swimming beneath their ship. One of them rushed Helena and she defended herself. Helena knocked one of the scouts out and chased the other into the sunken ship. Unaware of what may be inside Helena began to back off when the wreckage exploded and shot three greenish yellow lightning bolts into the sky. The shockwave obliterated the ship and nearly knocked Helena unconscious. She recovered the body of the Tabaxi who detonated the ship and returned to Gigi’s ship where the rest of the group had taken the other Tabaxi captive. The captive tabaxi proved uncooperative, but claimed he alone stole the cloak, and his leader had nothing to do with it. On the way sailing back the sky quickly filled with storm clouds and it began to pour rain. Nyanta insisted upon bringing the captive and his dead brother back to their own people to be punished. Helena told him not to, but didn;t explain why and Nyanta stayed steadfast in his resolve stating that he didn’t want this to escalate into a war between the Panthers and Alfenheim. With that he took the captive and his dead brother north. However as Nyanta and Helena debated this outside of town, a massive flash of lightning lit up the world as a strange airship zoomed out from the clouds over the bay and descended on Alfenheim. Helena flew back on her broom and Nyanta continued into the woods where the captive attacked him. He tried to end the conflict peacefully when Cassandra caught up and knocked the prisoner out. Meanwhile the skyship descended on the harbor and began to rain fireballs and sonic blasts from strange metallic mana cannons mounted on its deck. Blazej leapt into action and blasted the ship with a fireball just before it crossed past the temple of Hekkai Kekkai. The ship was set ablaze but one of the mana canons blasted Blazej off the roof and nearly killed him. Blazej ran for cover inside a nearby building when two of the Skyship’s occupants misty stepped down to the ground to finish him off. They had black spiked hair, convex noses and spotted yellow skin. The raised their silver greatswords to strike Blazej, but as they closed in Warren and Tarthurac charged onto the scene and cut them down. Warren hit the ship with a grappling hook while Tarthurac told the bloody Blazej to run to the guild and get help. Tarthurac and Warren climbed Warren’s rope onto the ship to try to destroy it’s crew. Warren charged in and took out a crew member, but two crew men wearing decorated armor charged him with their silver greatswords and they began to hack him down. Tarthurac misty stepped in as quickly as he could to interpose himself between Warren and his attackers. He grabbed Warren and leapt over the side of the ship to get to safety. Tarthurac used his entire healing pool to get himself and Warren back into fighting shape, but neither of them had a way to effectively hit the ship from the ground. Once the ship reached the center of town, electricity began to build up on the ship’s metallic keel and with a loud blast the ship disappeared, leveling the entire town square with the blast. Nyanta reached the Panther’s village only to be intercepted by scouts. Once he was there, the scouts arrested him and his captive until a trial could be held.